Critical Viewing
Boyz N the Hood is a movie examining the social issues and experiences of three friends that grew up in a Los Angeles ghetto. The film takes place in 1985, and then flashes seven years into the future to 1992. The film follows Tre Styles, an intelligent ten year old who was aggressive and immature in his early school years. As a result of his hot temper, his mother, Reva (Angela Bassett), sent him to live with his father, Furious (Laurence Fishburne), who proves to be stricter and more watchful than his mother. He soon reunites with his childhood friends across the street, Ricky and Doughboy. Throughout the film’s childhood sequence, Furious focuses on keeping Tre out of the harsh street life and teaches him how to be a true man, not the masculine male image young black men are all too familiar with. In fact, the first night that Tre is with his father, Furious shoots at and misses a burglar. This serves to give Tre a reality check. The film then skips forward seven years to a celebration of Doughboy’s release from prison. It is then revealed that Ricky is a father a 17, addressing an issue of teen pregnancy. Tension rises as Doughboy is involved in gang life; at a street car show, a rival gang member harasses Ricky, which makes Doughboy brandish his .45 caliber. At a point in the movie, Ricky and Tre are walking away from each other, when suddenly the rival gang member appears and shoots Ricky in the chest, killing him. It is later uncovered that he got a high enough SAT score to attend college with a full scholarship, therefore getting off the streets. Doughboy then precedes to seek out and kill Ricky’s murderer. As the movie ends, subtitles show that Doughboy was killed two weeks after in another retaliation.
The film begins with a statistic, “One out of every 21 Black American males will be murdered in their lifetime. Most at the hand of another Black male,” thus establishing the purpose and tone of the film. The film’s intent is to address the grim reality being ignored, a perpetual cycle of gun violence against young black males, by young black males. This problem is being ignored by American white suburban society. In this quote by the character, Furious Styles, “Why is it that there is a gun shop on almost every corner in this community? I’ll tell you why. For the same reason that there is a liquor store on almost every corner in the black community. Why? They want us to kill ourselves,” the film argues that society not only refuses to acknowledge this issue, but intentionally does so in order to keep the black community oppressed and impoverished. The writer and director of Boyz N the Hood, John Singleton, based the movie off his personal experiences growing up surrounded by gun violence and the pressures of masculinity. His films are known for addressing inner-city issues. Since Singleton’s intention with this movie is inner-city black gun violence awareness, he targets two audiences with this particular film. The first audience is young black males, and the second is ignorant white suburbia.
The featured characters in this film can be related to several in a black community. Tre is an individual who has more of a moral conscience and a sense of right and wrong. This is due to his father, Furious Styles. Furious is the only parent in the neighborhood that truly “Gives a damn” about his child’s well being, while others start to accept that their kids will be in danger, such as Ricky and Doughboy’s mother. Doughboy is a typical “gangster,” acting tough around his friends and showing his guns when he needs to. Next up is Ricky, a character similar to Tre, but slightly different, given the fact that he was indeed a father. Ricky was a gifted athlete that had high hopes for a good life, and also somewhat knew right from wrong. Unfortunately, his life was ended prematurely, a sad reality that does happen in communities like this one. Another relatable character is Reva, Tre’s single mother. She proves herself to be highly educated and accomplished, earning her master’s degree in the beginning of the movie. The final relatable character and/or characters are a group of women at Doughboy’s welcome home barbeque. They are shown no respect by Doughboy and the majority of his friends, as many women aren’t in such communities.
Black culture was both embraced and criticized in this film. Singleton celebrated certain aspects of African American inner-city culture, such as the closeness in community and family. However, despite a strong sense of empathy, the criticisms of the violent culture of the Los Angeles ghetto outweigh the positives in the film. The objective was to reveal the constant cycle of murder and the self-fulfilling prophecy due to the pressures of masculinity. In order to do this, Singleton risks reinforcing the stereotype that young black males are violent. Whether or not stereotypes exist in this film is purely subjective, because, for example, Singleton portrays the reality of “the Hood,” but an outsider may view it was stereotypical. Race politics and arguments are inevitably implied, because Singleton’s film addresses societal problems related to race specifically. Police brutality is a sub-issue alluded to in the film through two scenes involving a black cop abusing his authority and threatening the young black males. For example, a cop pulled Tre and Ricky over and the black cop presses his loaded gun to Tre’s neck while verbally threatening him. Scenes like this one bring up serious societal problems surrounding race.
As a group, we have decided that the movie does a good job in documenting the harsh realities of growing up in ghettos. Unfortunately, gun and gang violence is a sad and gruesome thing. The movie even states the statistic that one in every twenty one black males will be killed by another black male. Another sad truth is the issue of teen pregnancy, which is addressed by two things: the fact that Tre was born when Furious was seventeen, and at seventeen Ricky becomes a father. Also, the desensitization of the kids in the beginning of the film is eye opening. For example, the ten year old kids discover a dead body and think nothing of it. Also, Tre witnesses an assault on a man while walking home from school, and regularly goes about his business as the man is savagely beaten by gang members. The film does paint a realistic setting of the time with all the gang violence and the brutal police officers of the Los Angeles area as well as the poverty stricken areas of the ghetto. You can see the areas are very dirty and unkempt because they are so ravaged by the violence. Another realistic aspect is the dialogue used in the film. Slang words, swearing, insults, and racial terms plague the film in a way that makes it feel very real, which adds more depth to the overall picture. Though the language can be viewed as stereotypical it is the language that was being used in all the music and films of the time. Lastly, when thinking of a counterpart movie of another race/ethnic group to compare this film with, none comes to mind. This is simply because this movie was one of the first of it’s kind, and was an original concept.